What Fresh Hell Is This?

Today's delivery of manure from the folks at Camp Runamuck consists of some prime material concerning jobs that Sprint is bringing back to the United States from Mexico. From CNBC:

Trump said the deal "was done through" SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, a Japanese billionaire and technology investor. Earlier this month, Trump and Son announced in New York that SoftBank had agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. and aimed to create 50,000 jobs.

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Wait for it…

While Trump made a point to announce the Sprint job creation, those positions are part of the previously-announced deal with SoftBank, a Sprint spokesman told NBC News. "The 5,000 jobs announced today are part of the 50,000 jobs that Masa Son [Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of SoftBank] announced a few weeks ago, but these jobs will be funded by Sprint," the Sprint spokesman said.

Yeah, it's a pile of swill, but it's very marketable swill, so you should keep an eye on how it gets sold. We have some experience with this from the early days of the Reagan Administration, when they oversold the failures of the Carter presidency and then even more fervently oversold the efficacy of the crackpot economic schemes they'd ridden into office.

There's a terrific anecdote in Mark Hertsgaard's On Bended Knee, the definitive account of the failure of the elite political press in the wake of Ronald Reagan's election, a failure that we're all still paying for today. It is the depths of the 1982 recession, which largely was exacerbated by the phantom mathematics of the first Reagan budget, and which ultimately cost the president 27 seats in the 1982 midterms. Lesley Stahl of CBS goes out and does a series of reports about the effects of the recession on ordinary Americans. As part of the process, she also runs B-roll of President Reagan campaigning for Republican congressional candidates, all puffed up in front of banks of American flags. Later, she talks to Michael Deaver, Reagan's master of stagecraft. Stahl thinks she's about to get chewed out for her reporting. Instead, Deaver thanks her for all the lovely shots of Reagan in patriotic excelsis.

Stahl was criticized subsequently for overstating the importance of images over ideas in telling this story, but the election of El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago after a campaign in which he was the only idea he had makes me think Stahl was simply ahead of her time. This kind of thing is already beginning to happen again. Consider how The New York Times handled the Sprint story.

"I was just called by the head people at Sprint, and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States," Mr. Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. "They have taken them from other countries. They are bringing them back to the United States." Sprint later said that the jobs were part of a previously announced commitment by Japan's SoftBank, which owns a controlling stake in the mobile phone carrier, to invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 positions. That announcement, made by Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of SoftBank, followed a meeting with Mr. Trump this month.

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This is something worse than a half-truth. If you watch the video that accompanies the story, you will hear the president-elect talk about the "spirit of what's happening here" as the reason for Sprint's decision, which is a lie. That quote is barbered in the story to eliminate the opening part of it, and all we get is that Trump is "taking credit" for the move, instead of the obvious fact that he's lying about it.

Asked about its new target, a spokeswoman told POLITICO the "5,000 jobs announced today are part of the 50,000 jobs that [SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son] previously announced. It will be a combination of newly created jobs and bringing some existing jobs back to the U.S." Trump, for his part, told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday that Sprint offered to bring jobs back to the U.S. because of "what is happening and the spirit and the hope" from his election. Pressed later on the claim, the president-elect insisted that "because of me they are doing 5,000 jobs in this country."

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Still not great, but at least TBOTP nudges the reader toward the obvious conclusion that the president-elect is gilding his own lily again.

Of course, Himself actually made an appearance in the tasteful doorway of his equally tasteful Florida pile on Wednesday. (I thought the presence of Don King, brandishing a bouquet of flags from around the world, added a certain gravitas to the proceedings. Lord, what have we done?) He had some things he wanted to say. Most of them were typically, ahem, coherence-free.

On the continuing story of the Russian hacking:

I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I'm not sure we have the kind, the security we need.

On the current wrangling between the administration and Israel:

I'm very strong on Israel. I think that Israel has been treated very, very unfairly by a lot of different people. If you look at resolutions in the United Nation . . . they are up for 20 reprimands and other nations that are horrible places, horrible places that treat people horribly haven't even been reprimanded. So there is something going on and I think it is very unfair to Israel.

There's always "something going on."

These remarks give me great hope, especially in combination with what Robert Costa reports inThe Washington Post.

Trump told them that Reagan's "style" and Kennedy's articulation of grand national ambitions are central to how he thinks through his own speech, which will be given Jan. 20, the people said. And while Trump is working closely with Stephen Miller, his aide and speechwriter, on the text, he confided that in recent days he has become more personally involved in the writing process, the people said. The people requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the conversation.

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And because they'd like to have careers in politics when this all blows over.

Then there's this. His flack is beset by one of the firstest First World problems I've even seen. Per Page Six:

While in DC on Wednesday with her kids looking at schools, Conway told me, "I would not characterize myself as 'worried' so much as amused by the silence and sighs on the other end of the phone when friends and allies have made preliminary inquiries on our behalf." While the posh private schools' handbooks and websites all preach "diversity" and "open-mindedness," Conway said, "For some, there is a comfort in sameness."

Maybe your 25-year career of public insufferability comes at a price your poor spalpeens have to pay. That would be too bad. (Notice, please, the lack of a specific example of someone afflicting the Conway children with liberal ideological meidung.) Honestly, though, is there anyone in that operation who doesn't whine at a pitch audible at NORAD?

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Of course, if she needs a miracle, Kellyanne can call on this lovely Jesus lady who will be praying over the still-warm corpse of the American republic on January 20. The Daily Beastexplains:

If you think this sounds shady, you're not alone. As ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and his staff spent three years scrutinizing the finances of White and a handful of other prosperity-gospel-preaching televangelists. Investigators didn't find any definitive proof of wrongdoing. While Grassley was investigating White, Trump was praising her. CNN quoted him in a broadcast aired Nov. 26, 2007, describing her in glowing terms. "Paula White is not only a beautiful person, both inside and out, she has a significant message to offer anyone who will tune in and pay attention," Trump said. "She has amazing insight, the ability to deliver that message clearly, as well as powerfully." White has expressed similar sentiments about Trump, once describing him as "a diamond that reveals a new facet each time it is turned in the light."

If the president-elect had been hanging around Galilee back in the day, he'd have charged 20 bucks for each loaf and 50 for every fish. And the bread would have been stale and the fish, rotten.

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